One of our most elusive movie monsters avoids capture once again. I’m no werewolf film completist, but I do know that iterations as varied as 1941’s The Wolf Man (my favorite), 2010’s The Wolfman (an unfortunate venture with Benicio Del Toro and Emily Blunt), and last year’s Blackout (an intriguing effort from low-budget horror auteur Larry Fessenden) have all failed to fully demonstrate the guilt-inducing, identity-disrupting potential of this vaunted myth. Add Wolf Man to that list, despite being director Leigh Whannell’s follow-up to another, far better reimagining of a Universal horror classic: 2020’s The Invisible Man. Starring Elisabeth Moss, that was a gnarly, timely metaphor about believing women who make charges against powerful men, but Wolf Man has less thematic ambition. Christopher Abbott plays Blake, a loving stay-at-home father to a young daughter (Matilda Firth) and uneasy husband to Charlotte (Julia Garner), his journalist wife. When word arrives of his estranged father’s death back at Blake’s childhood homestead in deeply rural Oregon, he proposes the family go together to clean out the house. He hopes it will be a bonding experience, but the woods have other plans. Wolf Man opens with a crackerjack flashback scene to Blake’s youth—where the hot breath of a pursuer, steaming in the cool air, provides the most tension—but otherwise the movie is devoid of thrilling, chilling set pieces. (Mild spoiler ahead.) And the central metaphor at work—that a decent, if overprotective, dad has to face the reality that he might actually be a threat to his family—lacks dramatic heft. As for the werewolf effects, I appreciate that they appear to mostly rely on practical elements, but the end result still leaves you wanting: this wolf man is less rabid animal than angry burn victim.
(1/15/2025)
